Former Arsenal captain Granit Xhaka has opened up about life in North London, months after he completed a move to Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen.

In an interview with The Athletic, Xhaka claimed the club showed him little respect, accusing key figures at the club of pushing him out of the Emirates.

“The club showed me little respect even though I was the captain. It was clear they wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible, apart from one person: Mikel Arteta,” Xhaka told The Athletic, as reported by Fabrizio Romano.

The Swiss midfielder says he had already resolved to leave the club and advance his career elsewhere before the club appointed Mikel Arteta as head coach.

In his own words, they had a man-to-man conversation with the Spanish tactician who convinced him to stay despite feeling unwanted by other key figures at the club.

“When I met him for the first time, my bags were already packed and I was about to hop on a plane. With my heart and soul, I had already left Arsenal. I said to him, ‘The solution is for me to go’. Mikel told me he wanted me to stay,” recounted the 31-year-old.

Xhaka narrated that he sought advice from his father after Arteta’s plea to him to stay but his father advised him that he should leave the club for he had no future at Arsenal.

“I could not imagine myself playing for Arsenal again. I said to him, ‘I just want to be somewhere where the fans don’t boo me’. But he was so convincing,” the Bayer Leverkusen man said.

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The midfielder narrates that for the first time in his life, he made a decision without first talking to his family – and the decision was to stay at the Emirates. He got up, dusted himself, and continued fighting for the Gunners.

Xhaka joined Arsenal from Borussia Mönchengladbach in May 2016 for a fee of around £30–35 million and left for Leverkusen in July 2023 for a fee of £21.4 million. He made 225 appearances in his seven-year spell at the Emirates and scored 17 goals.